Official press release:
DC metal band Gloom has signed a worldwide deal with Entertainment One Music/Lifeblood Inc. and is releasing an all new track today titled “Cede” exclusively via MetalSucks. The band says:
“We couldn’t be happier to be a part of the Lifeblood and eOne family. We’ve been hunkered down working so hard that I don’t think the reality has set in for all of us. We’re just really grateful to have such high a quality team backing us.”
Gloom will release their debut full length, Solaris, on June 2, 2017. Pre-order it from IndieMerch or iTunes. They band commented on the record and first single “Cede”:
“Solaris is our first full length and while we were writing the album we really wanted to bring all our individual influences to the table and create something dynamic. We really want to carve out our own niche in metal and Solaris is a big step in that direction. For us, ‘Cede’ is a good musical representation of some of the different styles you’ll hear on the album. Lyrically, it’s about breaking the cycle of a bad on-off relationship I had for years and finding a place where I could grow out of those feelings.”
Gloom will be opening the Devastation On The Nation Festival Tour throughout the US and Canada from 5/19-6/11 alongside Cryptopsy, Decrepit Birth, Rivers Of Nihil, The Zenith Passage, The Kennedy Veil, Visceral Disgorge, and Seeker via Continental Concerts USA. Presented by MetalSucks.
Gloom began without career expectations and devoid of obligation toward any particular niche or sub genre. Gloom trades in succinct, to-the-point, blackened death metal groove with a doomy swagger, created first and foremost as art for its own sake. That mentality has paid off in spades, as the band’s unrelenting authenticity and overpowering singular heaviness quickly made fans out of underground metal fans and media tastemakers.
Metal Injection proudly premiered the band’s “incredibly intense and focused” debut EP, insisting listeners absorb what the website heralded as the band’s “schizophrenic mass of riffs.” Loudwire included a Gloom track in their list of the Best Metal Songs of 2014, right alongside metal genre titans like Mastodon and Eyehategod. The accolades have been similarly enthusiastic from the likes of Terrorizer and MetalSucks.
It’s a testament to that enduring spirit that’s driven classic metal bands from Black Sabbath to Motörhead to Metallica to take their own influences, merge them together, incorporate disparate elements and forge their own sound. The 2014 EP, produced by Wretched drummer Marshall Wieczorek, served as a brilliantly brief introductory precursor to all that the band would reveal on their full-length debut, the blistering and dynamic Solaris.
On their first release through Lifeblood, Inc. and eOne Music, the Washington D.C. quartet has fully hit their creative stride with nine masterpieces of sonic devastation and diverse musical prowess. Metal maniacs weaned on the dark ferocity of Norwegian black metal stalwarts Gorgoroth, the chaotic and challengingly surreal assault of early Burzum, or the demonstrative brutality of death metal icons Suffocation will find something evocative and provoking within Gloom. These savage elements collide with combustible energy against the near psychedelic, progressive, and technical excursions reminiscent of bands like Between The Buried And Me, all intermingled with the atmospheric groove of Deftones and Tool.
Gloom has the seemingly at odds brooding melodic menace of the darker sirens of grunge coursing through its DNA, as evidenced by their killer take on “Them Bones”, the song that opens Alice In Chain’s sophomore set, Dirt.
While Suffocation and modern deathcore kingpins like Whitechapel and Suicide Silence are kindred spirits vocally, frontman and co founder Bill Calomiris performance and lyrics draw from the earnestness and emotional honesty of Billy Corgan and Fiona Apple, jettisoning the gimmicky “gore” favored by the genre for a more sincere form of self-expression. Gloom never shies away from confronting feelings of anger, rejection, or nostalgia. As heavy and uncompromising as their music can be, the emotions at their core maintain a relatable nature, from relationship issues to inner struggle.
The fact that Musicians Institute graduate Dante Dalton, the band’s guitarist, has worked on film scores will come as no surprise after hearing the more cinematic moments mined within Gloom. Drummer Albert Born is a trained aerospace engineer; it would be both an easy joke and a severe understatement to say that his propulsive pummeling gives the band a lift. Like the rest of his close friends in the band, bassist Jason Sayell offers a true emotional outpouring within Gloom. Their music is deadly serious and cathartic, while the guys are fun loving and easygoing in everyday life.
The moody post-black metal of “1% Empty” is drawn from the bassist’s life experience, melding seamlessly but dynamically with the more traditional death metal attack of the David vs. Goliath style story of “Perseus”, the groovy, progressive, and sometimes esoteric bad relationship ender, “Cede”, and the unabashedly heavy and haunting “Sub Umbral”.
Combining death metal, black metal, doom metal, progressive metal, post-grunge, and grooving atmospheric rock to create a distinctive artistic identity of their own, Gloom earns a place in the pantheon of heavy music in closer proximity to timeless giants than forgettable clones. v represents honesty in its glorious heaviness, philosophically and musically.
Solaris track listing:
1. “Fallen”
2. “Perseus”
3. “Orbits”
4. “Cede”
5. “Coronation”
6. “Naught”
7. “1% Empty”
8. “Appetence Hominae”
9. “Sub Umbral”
10. “Them Bones” (cover)
